Optimism and subjective well-being: Affectivity plays a secondary role in the relationship between optimism and global life satisfaction in the middle-aged women. Longitudinal and cross-cultural findings

The focus of the present study lies on optimism and its relationships to the components of subjective well-being, i.e. global life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. We investigated the direct and indirect (via affectivity) effects of optimism on global life satisfaction in the Swedish middle-aged women at two time points (age 43 and 49), and in the Lithuanian middle-aged women. For this purpose, structural equation modelling was used and the fit indices were compared between two cognitive-affective models. The best fitting model suggests that the direct effect of optimism on global life satisfaction is stronger than that via affectivity. The result was found both in the Swedish sample at two time points and in the Lithuanian sample where the indirect effect was very low and insignificant. The indirect effect via negative affectivity was significant in the Swedish samples at both time points while the indirect effect via positive affectivity was low but significant only in the Swedish sample at age 43. In further analyses we studied the stability of optimism and the components of general SWB in the Swedish sample over a six-year period and a mean difference in optimism in two samples of women, Swedish and Lithuanian. Data analyses showed varying stability of the studied concepts with the highest stability coefficient being for negative affect and the lowest being for global life satisfaction. Cross-cultural analysis of mean difference in optimism showed that the Swedish women at age 43 reported significantly higher optimism as compared to their Lithuanian counterparts

Longitudinal examination of relationships between problem behaviors and academic achievement in young adolescents

AbstractA substantial body of research has documented associations between a variety of problem behaviors and academic achievement measures. A systemic viewpoint posits that behavioral and academic problems exert reciprocal influences on one another, which, over time, can negatively affect the development of individuals and their environments. However, the results of these studies should be interpreted cautiously, given the considerable comorbidity of problem behaviors that often exists among school-age youth. Another limitation is that those associations mostly are documented in cross-sectional studies. This longitudinal study addressed the relationships between internalizing and externalizing self-reported problem behavior syndromes (withdrawal, somatic complaints, anxiety/depression, delinquent behavior, and aggressive behavior) and mean measures of academic achievement (overall, mean score of reading & spelling, and arithmetic performance). We found some interaction effects of problem behavior, gender and grade on academic achievement. First, we found a decrease of academic achievement trough grades 6 to 8, among girls who exhibit less aggressiveness, while academic achievement among ones that are “more” aggressive stays the same across grades. Academic achievement among girls is pretty much the same across all grades, yet overall academic achievement is higher in non-delinquent group in all age groups Secondly, in boys group there is a decrease of academic achievement trough grades 6 to 8 among boys who show more aggressiveness, while academic achievement among boys who exhibit less aggressiveness stays the same across grades. The significant multivariate effect of “grade”, “gender” and delinquency interaction indicates that there is a decrease of academic achievement across grades in both boys group, yet the decrease among boys showing more delinquent behaviors is bigger than among the normal boys group

Psychology and law : bridging the gap /

Includes bibliographical references and index.In the kingdom of the blind / David Canter -- Contemporary challenges in investigative psychology : revisiting the canter offender profiling equations / Donna Youngs -- Lie detectors and the law : the use of the polygraph in Europe / Ewout H. Meijer and Peter J. van Koppen -- Eyewitness research : theory and practice / Amina Memon -- Identification in court / Andrew Roberts and David Ormerod -- Profiling evidence in the courts / Ian Freckelton -- Implications of heterogeneity among individuals with antisocial behaviour / Henrik Andershed and Anna-Karin Andershed -- From crime to tort : criminal acts, civil liability, and the behavioral science / Daniel B. Kennedy and Jason R. Sakis -- The consequences of prison life : notes on the new psychology of prison effects / Craig Haney -- Psychopathy as an important forensic construct : past, present, and future / David J. Cooke -- Key considerations and problems in assessing risk for violence / Michael R. Davis and James R. P. Ogloff -- Computer-assisted violence risk assessment among people with mental disorder / John Monahan -- Does the law use even a small portion of what legal psychology has to offer? / Viktoras Justickis -- "They're an illusion to me now" : forensic ethics, sanism, and pretextuality / Michael L. Perlin

Psychometric Properties and Correlates of Precarious Manhood Beliefs in 62 Nations

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions (N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role. © The Author(s) 2021

Parent-Adolescent Cross-Informant Agreement in Clinically Referred Samples: Findings From Seven Societies

To conduct international comparisons of parent-adolescent cross-informant agreement in clinical samples, we analyzed ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self-Report (YSR) for 6,762 clinically referred adolescents ages 11-18 from 7 societies (M = 14.5 years, SD = 2.0 years; 51% boys). Using CBCL and YSR data, we asked the following questions: (a) Do parents report more problems for their adolescent children than the adolescents report about themselves? (b) How do cross-informant correlations (rs) for scale scores differ by problem type and by society? (c) How well do parents and adolescents, on average, agree regarding which problems they rate as low, medium, or high? (d) How does within-dyad item agreement vary within and between societies? (e) How do societies vary in dichotomous cross-informant agreement with respect to the deviance status of the adolescents? CBCL and YSR scores were quite similar, with small and inconsistent informant effects across societies. Cross-informant rs averaged .47 across scales and societies. On average, parents and adolescents agreed well regarding which problem items received low, medium, or high ratings (M r = .87). Mean within-dyad item agreement was moderate across all societies, but dyadic agreement varied widely within every society. In most societies, adolescent noncorroboration of parent-reported deviance was more common than parental noncorroboration of adolescent-reported deviance. Overall, somewhat better parent-adolescent agreement and more consistency in agreement patterns across diverse societies were found in these seven clinical samples than in population samples studied using the same methods